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She Monkeys

This year's winner of the Dragon Award Best Nordic Film is She Monkeys, directed by Lisa Aschan. The prize is one million SEK as of this year. The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award goes to the American film Blue Valentine, directed by Derek Cianfrance. Another eight awards were handed out at Göteborg International Film Festival's Dragon Award Gala on Saturday night.

Lisa Aschan's feature debut She Monkeys received this year's Dragon Award Best Nordic Film. The prize sum is from this year one million SEK from the Västra Götaland Region, Göteborg city, and from all those who contributed to the Dragon Fund.

Statement of the jury: This was a film we loved unconditionally.
It stayed with us all the time, and finally we felt that we must give this award to support a new, very special talent.

Jury: Danis Tanovic. director, Lisa Siwe, director, Maria Bonnevie, actress, Mogens Rukov, screen writer, Aleksi Bardy, screen writer and producer and Gudrun Edda Thorhannesdottir, producer.

The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award
The American film Blue Valentine by Derek Cianfrance is awarded The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award. The prize is a week's stay at the Bergman Week, a DVD box with 23 Bergman films and a beautiful stone from Ingmar Bergman's beach on Fårö, with his name engraved.

Statement of the jury: The 2011 Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award goes to Blue Valentine for an impressively precise yet sensitive analysis of human relationships from an impartially nuanced perspective.

Jury: Sylvain Auzou, head of the Venice Days section, Esther Rots, director, Jan Holmberg, CEO of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation and Agnes Kocsis, director.

Dragon Award Best Swedish Documentary
The award for the best swedish documentary goes to I was Worth 50 Sheep by Nima Sarvestani.
 
Statement of the jury: It could be a thousand years after Christ. An ancient tradition is depicted. Young girls and women are bought and sold. It is an ongoing slave trade. I was worth 50 Sheep is a film that initiates an important discussion. It describes women's oppression in Afghanistan, yet raises the subject to something universal. The women in the film speak for themselves, no one talks about them. We enter homes where destitute patriarchs whine for a glass of water. A classic documentary in its most naked form, without any attempts to manipulate.

Jury: Cecilia Parsberg, artist and filmmaker, Carl Johan de Geer, artist, writer and director and Marcus Lindéen, director and screen writer.

Dragon Award Best Nordic Film - Audience Choice
The festival audience voted I miss you by Anders Grönros the best Nordic film. 

Dragon Award Best Feature Film - Audience Choice
The festival audience voted the Norwegian documentary Tears of Gaza by Vibeke Løkkeberg the festival's best feature film.

Dragon Award New Talent
The Film Festival's international web-based short film prize was won by Los Gritones (The Screamers) by Roberto Pérez Toledo from Spain. More than 100 entries from across the world were uploaded to the competition's website. The award was accepted by the actress Ruth Armas Jimenez.

Statement of the jury: Telling a story in the short format, with simplicity and precision is truly an art form in itself. The winning film manages to portray a major conflict in a young couple's relationship, with both humour and sweetness - all in less than two minutes. The film's nerve, presence and unexpected twist makes you sit back, surprised, with an urge to scream out: Yes!

The Lorens Award
Producers Mimmi Spång and Rebecka LaFrenz are awarded the Lorens Award for the feature film Sebbe. The prize, which is handed out by Stockholm Postproduction and goes to one of the producers of Swedish feature films of 2010, consists of free development of the winning producer's next feature film. The prize is estimated to be worth approximately SEK 500 000.

Statement of the jury: The 2011 Lorens Award goes to two producers who have already shown great courage as well as an instinctive feel out of the ordinary. With their hearts in the right place and a genuine curiosity for the different ways of filmic expression, they give us everything from animated documentaries to pitch-black dramas. For their strong collaboration and courage to give creative space, that shines through in the strong film Sebbe, the Lorens Award goes to Mimmi Spång and Rebecka LaFrenz.

Kodak Nordic Vision Award
The Norwegian feature film King of Devil's Island by Marius Holst is awarded with the Kodak Nordic Vision Award. The price consists of film stock to a value of SEK 50 000 and is handed out for best cinematography among the films nominated in Dragon Award Best Nordic Film.

Statement of the jury: For the clarity with which the anguish of the caracters is transmitted and the coldness of the nature. The classical style is not easy to handle but it supports the intensity of the story.

Best Swedish Feature - The Church of Sweden Film Award
The Church of Sweden Film Award Swedish Church Prize, worth SEK 50 000, for best Swedish film goes to the documentary Mother's Comeback by Åsa Ekman.
 
Statement of the jury: A life-affirming story about dignity, integrity and the search for meaning. A film which shows how three people reveal qualities of strength, courage and unconditional love and an inspiration to awaken our inner power.

Jury: Mia Wright, director and producer, Michael Kowalski, film and media educator, Michael Ringlander, priest and Tuulikki Koivunen, bishop.

FIPRESCI Award
The FIPRESCI Award goes to She Monkeys by Lisa Aschan. The award is handed out by the international federation of film critics and goes to one of the Dragon Awards nominees for Best Nordic Film.

Statement of the jury: She Monkeys is a story about love and jealousy, implicating a lonely father, his two daughters, a beautiful cousin and an enigmatic equestrian dancer. Thanks to a clever direction, each actor - even the youngest - deals with  the most tricky situations with a surprising accuracy for a first feature. Beautifully crafted, She Monkeys found a rythm as spellbinding as the sound of horses' hooves that punctuates the film. Lisa Aschan plays quietly with the codes of thriller, western and a very delicate eroticism. She preserved elements of mystery which gives us only one desire: to see her make a new movie.
 
Jury: Ruth Pombo, film critic and journalist, Pamela Pianezza, film critic and journalist, Christoph Egger, former film editor of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

The data from the winning films can be found under Dragon Awards in our Media Bank.